Renzo Piano et Richard Rogers exhibition at Centre Pompidou, Paris

The Centre Pompidou in Paris tells its own story, step by step; the story of an iconic building that kept two architects, Renzo Piano and Richards Rogers, young and smiling in the photograph above, busy for seven years. Told through the various phases in design and construction, the articles and features appearing in newspapers and architecture magazines, and photo features covering the adventure of its construction.

The exhibition celebrating the fortieth birthday of the building that opened on January 30, 1977 is open to the public from December 13 2017 to February 12 2018 at Musée National d'Art Moderne (room 1 – level 5) in the centre. The exhibition begins with the original illustration with which the two architects won the 1971 design competition. The reaction to this “simple” illustration reverses the original trend, forty years down the road: the public now admires the intelligent, perhaps reckless decision made by the international panel of judges chaired by Jean Prouvé which chose Piano and Rogers’ project out of 681 entries forty years ago. After winning the competition, the two architects began an intense period of study aimed at giving form to the ideas they had presented in their preliminary plans, followed by many years of work preparing the site, Plateau Beaubourg, and constructing the building. The exhibition documents the whole process, leaving out nothing, not even the contestations that accompanied the story of a building that has become a symbol of twentieth-century architecture.

(Agnese Bifulco)

Title: Renzo Piano et Richard Rogers
Dates: 13 December 2017 - 12 February 2018
Location: Centre Pompidou Paris, France
Vintage photographs: © Archives Centre Pompidou, photo by Jean-Claude Planchet, Georges Meguerditchian, Eustache Kossakowski.
Photographs of exhibition installation: Hervé Veronese © Centre Pompidou

www.centrepompidou.fr

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